Lover Avenged (40 page)

“The timing must be correct. Timing…is everything.”

Rehvenge watched Ehlena put her clothes back on, and though getting her back into that uniform wasn’t exactly what he wanted, the show of her bending over and slowly smoothing her stockings up her leg wasn’t half-bad.

Not. At. All.

She laughed as she picked her bra up and twirled it around her finger. “Can I put this on now?”

“Absolutely.”

“You going to make me take my time again?”

“I just figured there was no rush on the hose.” He smiled like the wolf he was feeling like. “I mean, those things run, don’t they-Oh, fuck me…”

Ehlena didn’t wait for him to finish talking, but arched her back and pulled the bra around her torso. The little shimmy she worked as she reclasped it in the front made him pant…and that was before she drew the straps over her shoulders, leaving the cups wedged under her breasts.

She came over to him. “I’ve forgotten how to work it. Can you help?”

Rehv growled and pulled her in close, sucking one nipple into his mouth and working the other with his thumb. Just as she gasped, he flipped the cups into place.

“I’m glad to be your lingerie engineer, but, you know, it looked better off you.” As he jogged his eyebrows at her, her laugh was so free and easy his heart stopped. “I like that sound.”

“And I like making it.”

She stepped into her uniform and pulled it up and then fastened its buttons.

“Pity,” he said.

“You want to know something silly? I wore this even though I don’t have to go to work tonight.”

“Did you? Why?”

“I wanted to keep things professional, and yet here I am, thrilled that it didn’t work out that way.”

He stood up and took her into his arms, not worried at all about being totally naked now. “Count me in on the thrilled part.”

He kissed her softly, and as they parted, she said, “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

Rehv tucked her hair behind her ears. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Working.”

“When do you get off?”

“Four.”

“Be here?”

She didn’t pause. “Yes.”

As they walked out of the bedroom and through the library, he said, “I’m going to see my mother now.”

“You are?”

“Yeah, she called me and asked to see me. She never does that.” It felt so right to be sharing details of his life. Well, some of them, at any rate. “She’s been trying to make me more spiritual, and I’m hoping this isn’t a bid to get me on some kind of retreat.”

“What do you do, by the way? For work?” Ehlena laughed. “I know so little about you.”

Rehv fixated on the view of the city over her shoulder. “Oh, a lot of different things. Mostly in the human world. I have only my mother to take care of, now that my sister is mated.”

“Where’s your father?”

In the cold grave, where the fucker belonged. “He’s passed.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ehlena’s warm eyes made a shot of what sure as shit felt like guilt go through his chest. He didn’t regret killing his old man; he was sorry that he was obscuring so much from her.

“Thanks,” he said stiffly.

“I don’t mean to pry. About your life or your family. I’m just curious, but if you’d prefer-”

“No, it’s just…I don’t talk about myself much.” Wasn’t that the truth. “Is that…is that a cell phone ringing?”

Ehlena frowned and broke away. “Mine. In my coat.”

She loped off into the dining room, and the tension in her voice as she answered was apparent. “Yes? Oh, hi! Yeah, no, I-Now? Of course. And the funny thing is I won’t need to go change into my uniform because-Oh. Yes. Uh-huh. Okay.”

He heard the phone clip shut as he got to the dining room’s archway. “Everything all right?”

“Ah, yeah. Just work.” Ehlena came over while pulling her coat on. “It’s nothing. Probably just staffing stuff.”

“You want me to drive you over?” God, he would love to take her to work, and not just because they could be together a little longer. A male wanted to do things for his female. Protect her. See to her-

Okay, what the fuck? It wasn’t that he didn’t like the thoughts he was having about her, but it was as if someone had switched his CD. And no, it wasn’t to Barry fucking Manilow.

Although there was definitely some Maroon 5 on the bitch now.

Bleh.

“Oh, I’ll just go, but thank you.” Ehlena paused in front of one of the sliding doors. “Tonight has been such…a revelation.”

Rehv stalked up to her, took her face in his hands, and kissed her hard. When he pulled back, he said darkly, “Only because of you.”

She beamed then, glowing from within, and abruptly he wanted her naked again just so he could come inside of her: The marking instinct was screaming in him, and the only way he could placate it was by telling himself he’d left enough of his scent on her skin.

“Text me when you get to the clinic so I know you’re safe,” he said.

“I will.”

One last kiss and she was through the door and off into the night.

As she left Rehvenge’s, Ehlena was flying, and not just because she was dematerializing across the river to the clinic. To her, the night wasn’t cold; it was fresh. Her uniform wasn’t wrinkled from having been tossed on a bed and rolled around upon; it was artfully disheveled. Her hair wasn’t a mess; it was casual.

The call to come into the clinic wasn’t an intrusion; it was an opportunity.

Nothing could take her down from this incandescent elevation. She was one of the stars in the velvety night sky, unreachable, untouchable, above the strife of the earthbound.

Taking form in front of the clinic’s garages, though, she lost some of her rose-colored glow. It seemed unfair that she could feel as she did, considering what had happened the night before: She’d bet her life on the fact that Stephan’s family wasn’t rebounding back to any semblance of joy right now. They would have just barely finished the death ritual, for God’s sake… It would be years before they could feel anything even remotely like what sang in her chest as she thought of Rehv.

Or if ever. She had the sense his parents might never be the same.

With a curse, she walked swiftly across the parking lot, her shoes leaving little black prints across the dusting of snow that had fallen earlier. As a staff member, getting through the checkpoints down to the waiting room didn’t take long, and when she came into the registration area, she shucked her coat and headed right for the front desk.

The nurse behind the computer looked up and smiled. Rhodes was one of the few males on the staff, and definitely a favorite at the clinic, the kind of guy who got along with everyone and was quick with the smiles and the hugs and the high fives.

“Hey, girlie, how you…” He frowned as she got closer to him, then pushed his chair back, putting space between them. “Er…hi.”

Frowning, she looked behind her, expecting to see a monster, given the way he shrank from her. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Totally.” His eyes were sharp. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. Glad to come in and help. Where’s Catya?”

“Waiting for you in Havers’s office, I think she said.”

“I’ll head on back then.”

“Yeah. Cool.”

She noticed his mug was empty. “You want me to bring you a coffee when I’m done?”

“No, no,” he said quickly, holding both hands up. “I’m fine. Thanks. Really.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yup. Totally fine. Thanks.”

Ehlena walked off, feeling like an absolute leper. Usually she and Rhodes were pally-pally, but not tonight-

Oh, my God, she thought. Rehvenge had left his scent on her. That had to be it.

She turned around…but what could she say, really?

Hoping Rhodes was the only one who’d pick up on it, she hit the locker room to ditch her coat and headed off, waving to staff and patients along the way. When she got to Havers’s office, the door was open, the doctor sitting behind his desk, Catya in the chair with her back to the hall.

Ehlena knocked softly on the jamb. “Hi.”

Havers looked up, and Catya glanced over her shoulder. They both seemed positively ill.

“Come in,” the doctor said gruffly. “And shut the door.”

Ehlena’s heart started to beat fast as she did what he asked. There was an empty chair next to Catya, and she sat down because her knees were suddenly loose.

She’d been in this office a number of times, usually to remind the doctor to eat, because once he started in with patient charts he lost track of time. But this was not about him, was it.

There was a long silence, during which Havers’s pale eyes would not meet hers as he fiddled with the earpieces of his tortoiseshell glasses.

Catya was the one who spoke, and her voice was tight. “Last night, before I left, one of the security guards who had been monitoring all the camera feeds brought it to my attention that you were in the pharmacy. Alone. He said he saw you take some pills and leave with them. I looked at the tape and checked the relevant shelves and it was penicillin.”

“Why didn’t you just bring him in?” Havers said. “I would have seen Rehvenge again immediately.”

The moment that followed was like something in a TV soap, where the camera zoomed in on the face of a character: Ehlena felt as though everything pulled away from her, the office retreating into the far distance as she was abruptly spotlit and under microscopic scrutiny.

Questions rolled into her brain. Did she really think she was going to get away with what she’d done? She’d even known about the security cameras…and yet she hadn’t thought about that when she’d gone behind the pharmacist’s counter the night before.

Everything was going to change as the result of this. Her life, once a struggle, was going to become insupportable.

Destiny? No…stupidity.

How the hell could she have done this?

“I’ll resign,” she said roughly. “Effective tonight. I should never have done it… I was worried about him, overwrought about Stephan, and I made a horrible judgment call. I’m deeply sorry.”

Neither Havers nor Catya said a thing, but they didn’t have to. It was all about trust, and she had violated theirs. As well as a shitload of patient safety regulations.

“I’ll clean out my locker. And leave immediately.”

Rehvenge didn’t get out to see his mother enough.

That was the thought that occurred to him as he pulled in front of the safe house he’d moved her into nearly a year ago. After the family mansion in Caldwell had been compromised by lessers, he’d gotten everyone out of that house and installed them at this Tudor mansion well south of town.

It had been the only thing good that had come of his sister’s abduction-well, that and the fact that Bella had found herself a male of worth in the Brother who’d rescued her. The thing was, with Rehv having taken his mother from the city when he had, she and her beloved doggen had escaped what the Lessening Society had done to the aristocracy over the summer.

Rehv parked the Bentley in front of the mansion, and before he got out of the car, the door to the house opened and his mother’s doggen stood in the light, huddled against the cold.

Rehv’s wingtips had slick soles, so he was very careful as he came around on the dusting of snow. “Is she okay?”

The doggen stared up at him, her eyes misting with tears. “It’s getting close to the time.”

Rehv came inside, closed the door, and refused to hear that. “Not possible.”

“I’m very sorry, sire.” The doggen took out a white handkerchief from the pocket of her gray uniform. “Very…sorry.”

“She’s not old enough.”

“Her life has been far longer than her years.”

The doggen knew well what had gone on in the house during the time Bella’s father had been with them. She had cleaned up broken glass and shattered china. Had bandaged and nursed.

“Verily, I can’t bear for her to go,” the maid said. “I shall be lost without my mistress.”

Rehv put a numb hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “You don’t know for sure. She hasn’t been to see Havers. Let me go be with her, okay?”

When the doggen nodded, Rehv slowly took the stairs up to the second floor, passing family portraits in oil that he had moved from the old house.

At the top of the landing, he went down to the left and knocked on a set of doors. “Mahmen?”

“In here, my son.”

The response in the Old Language came from behind another door, and he backtracked and went into her dressing room, the familiar scent of Chanel No. 5 calming him.

“Where are you?” he said to the yards and yards of hanging clothes.

“I am in the back, my dearest son.”

As Rehv walked down the rows of blouses and skirts and dresses and ball gowns, he breathed deeply. His mother’s signature perfume was on all of the garments, which were hung by color and type, and the bottle it came from was on the ornate dressing table, among her makeup and lotions and powders.

He found her in front of the three-way full-length mirror. Ironing.

Which was beyond odd and made him take stock of her.

His mother was regal even in her rose-colored dressing gown, her white hair up on her perfectly proportioned head, her posture exquisite as she sat on a high stool, her massive pear-shaped diamond flashing on her hand. The ironing board she sat behind had a woven basket and a can of spray starch on one end and a pile of pressed handkerchiefs on the other. As he watched her, she was in midkerchief, the pale yellow square she was working on halved, the iron she wielded hissing as she swept it up and down.

“Mahmen, what are you doing?” Okay, obvious on one level, but his mother was the chatelaine. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her do housework or laundry or anything of the sort. One had doggen for those things.